The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

by Annie Jacobsen

Christofilos’s theoretical Astrodome-like shield was the hoped-for result of exploding a large number of nuclear weapons in space as a means of defending against incoming Soviet ICBMs. By Christofilos’s count, this likely meant “thousands per year, in the lower reaches of the atmosphere.” These explosions, he said, would produce “huge quantities of radioactive atoms, and these in turn would emit high-energy electrons (beta particles) and inject them into a region of space where the earth’s magnetic fields would trap and hold on them for a long time.” Christofilos figured that this electromagnetic field could last months, or perhaps longer, and that “the trapped electrons would cause severe radiation—and even heat damage—to anything, man or nuclear weapon, that tried to fly through the region.” In short, the idea was that the arming and firing mechanisms on the incoming Soviet ICBMs would be fried.